The problem is the shared IP problem. No one wants to certify shared IPs, for any amount of money, at scale. Dedicated IPs can solve the problem today, but they're trickier and more expensive sometimes and aren't usually offered by cloud-based hosts. Domain Reputation, which is coming but coming slowly, will solve this problem completely, without the hosts having to be involved. We're one of the companies leading the charge on that, but it will take a couple years before ISPs and corporate networks can consume domain-based reputation data and make filtering decisions on it comprehensively (and thus also be able to handle a domain-based whitelist).
Thanks for the mention!
Matt
albert
· 4 months ago
Domain based with something like DKIM makes so much more sense. Hope you make good progress with that!
Dan W
· 4 months ago
You can get around this by using a non-EC2 mail server, for example using http://www.authsmtp.com/
albert
· 4 months ago
Unfortunately that tends to get expensive fast!
Julien
· 4 months ago
Authsmtp is indeed a great solution (but very expensive!). For slicehost, as you can really "play" with the dns it is quite easy to set-up reverse DNS, and most of spam engines would give a good "grade" to emails that are sent from a server that has the right matching between DNS and IP. I have been using that for a few services and that has really been a lifesaver.
I have even set-up relay SMTP from to EC2 instances to a Slicehost slice that had the DNS and reverse DNS setup correctly and that worked like a charm.
albert
· 4 months ago
You beat me to it on pointing out that authsmtp is too expensive. Yes - reverse DNS, SPF and DKIM will go a long way. Still doesn't address warming up of IPs so.
Julien
· 4 months ago
I m thinking that maybe the problem is actually emails themselves ;) I mean, I'd bet a lot on the fact that we're on the eve of seeing a massive "notification" wave. Twitter has shown that services can actually rely on that to build "engagement". The iPhone's Push proved that pushing to the phones is really awesome now that people don't have to pay for SMS, and Adobe's wave is proving that pushing to the desktop is very easy and convenient as well.
Emails have been over-used for things that probably didn't need emails, I think that is changing!
albert
· 4 months ago
That's a good point, but I think it will take a long time before anything is as ubiquitous as email!
bfeld
· 4 months ago
Another solution is one of the TechStars Boulder 2009 companies - SendGrid. www.sendgrid.com They are doing "transactional email delivery" for over 150 companies at this point and growing like crazy. Our friends at Return Path (Matt Blumberg and George Bilbrey) have also been awesome mentors for them this summer as part of the TechStars program.
isaacsaldana
· 4 months ago
Brad, thanks for the mention.
The issue with giving users a whitelisted IP is that they may get blacklisted unintentionally by not handling bounces, spam reports, ISP rate limits, or unsubscribes correctly.
There are even further problems on specific sites such as social networks where users import their contacts to invite other users and these emails don't exist anymore or the ISPs have turned them into SPAM traps. SendGrid exists to solve these problems and we are currently working with cloud providers to give their users a “Planning to send mail? Sign up here.” option. We also allow and encourage our users to integrate with Return Path.
albert
· 4 months ago
Great points about bounce handling and the problems of invites. Very much look forward to checking out sendgrid!
albert
· 4 months ago
That's perfect - will look at their pricing. All the existing services are too expensive for transactional use.
nicolastoper
· 4 months ago
The problem is more complex than simple whitelisting. Usually sender get blacklisted or enjoy a bad deliverability for good reasons.
I am working in a company called MxM which aim to solve this kind of problem. We relay your emails through SMTP and rewrite the email for deliverability.
You don't pay if your email goes into spam because this is the problem we are solving.
We give away free emails to startups so they can try out our services.
albert
· 4 months ago
That sounds promising - will check it out.
dan_leslie
· 4 months ago
Hi Albert, great post. There's no question that deliverability is becoming increasingly important. There's also no reason why developers should have to deal with this problem when the nuances of successful email delivery can be abstracted away to a trusted third party API, akin to the benefits of cloud hosting.
We've used TriggerMail (http://sailthru.com/products/triggermail) by SailThru (Neil Capel's company) for a few client projects which does exactly this and offers a REST-based API for easy integration with our apps. Their deliverability rates are the highest we've seen.
Whenever developers can offload a problem like this to a third party API there is enormous value and a pretty compelling business model.
albert
· 4 months ago
Dan - definitely should have mentioned SailThru/TriggerMail as worth looking at as a possible solution (Neil - sorry - but customer testimonial is even better!).
nabeel
· 4 months ago
There are a couple services you can use for email instead that solve this problem as third parties. We use Sailthru here at Conduit Labs, and there is the Techstars '09 company Send Grid. This is functionally similar to what you propose, since you end up paying a small premium (tax to these companies) to send messages this way, and eventually you end up taking it on yourself later.
albert
· 4 months ago
Yes - should have pointed to SailThru as I know Neil (thankfully Dan Leslie did - and now you also). Had not heard of SendGrid but Brad Feld pointed it out and they left a comment. Great to see these options!
All Comments
Thanks for the mention!
Matt
I have even set-up relay SMTP from to EC2 instances to a Slicehost slice that had the DNS and reverse DNS setup correctly and that worked like a charm.
Emails have been over-used for things that probably didn't need emails, I think that is changing!
The issue with giving users a whitelisted IP is that they may get blacklisted unintentionally by not handling bounces, spam reports, ISP rate limits, or unsubscribes correctly.
There are even further problems on specific sites such as social networks where users import their contacts to invite other users and these emails don't exist anymore or the ISPs have turned them into SPAM traps. SendGrid exists to solve these problems and we are currently working with cloud providers to give their users a “Planning to send mail? Sign up here.” option. We also allow and encourage our users to integrate with Return Path.
I am working in a company called MxM which aim to solve this kind of problem. We relay your emails through SMTP and rewrite the email for deliverability.
You don't pay if your email goes into spam because this is the problem we are solving.
We give away free emails to startups so they can try out our services.
We've used TriggerMail (http://sailthru.com/products/triggermail) by SailThru (Neil Capel's company) for a few client projects which does exactly this and offers a REST-based API for easy integration with our apps. Their deliverability rates are the highest we've seen.
Whenever developers can offload a problem like this to a third party API there is enormous value and a pretty compelling business model.